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The danger is not depressurisation, the danger is damage to the flight control systems, damage to the electrical systems, punching holes in fuel tanks (and probably making a bit of sparking and friction heat while at it), puncturing a landing wheel and the like. There are many, many ways a small hole in a vital part can endanger or even disable a modern airliner. Add to that the danger of a sleep deprived, stressed out person on a red-eye shooting an innocent he believed to be a terrorist, or just that f-ing annoying kid who keeps crying and kicking his seat... Also; seeing as there is no such things as a clear shoot inside the anxiety tube that is an airplane, you are going to hit something (or someone) that would be better off with no holes in it - even if you're firing at a legitimate target.

I much prefer if those who can legally carry check their guns on boarding - over here in Europe at least there used to be (might still be) a strong box up front where you could store such things as guns.

And honestly; if you're so attached to your weapon that you can't be separated from it while flying, perhaps driving might be a better solution for everyone involved?

Provided, off course, that they hadn't mounted the payload NEXT to the exploding external fuel tank... yes, I know doing it that way let you have lighter structure, but it introduced a whole range of problems and failure modes you wouldn't have had if the orbiter had been mounted on top.

If you had read the article, you would have noticed that “the supply chain no longer has the parts to sustain this weapon long term.” This is because the weapon is old and - from a military point of view - obsolete, so spare parts are no longer manufactured. It'll probably be quite a bit cheaper to re-equip with a newer rifle than to re-establish a Lee-Enfield production line - especially considering they are likely to pick an off-the-shelf rifle to equip a rather small force.

While I can't comment on the third world in general, I saw a lot of solar cell setups for charging cell phones in South Sudan - people even ran solar charging as a business; a solar panel, some car batteries, a black box of electronics and 3 to 5 South Sudanese pound for a full charge.
Also saw plenty of cell towers with solar panels and battery banks, with diesel generators for backup. Not as clean or tidy as plugging into the grid, granted... but it works. Was a life line for me for a year spent down there, and twice so for the people who lives their whole life there.
Just because you can't plug something into a national grid, don't mean you can't get power... often cheaper and more reliable than the grid too - at least in Juba.

An engine drives a compressor, heat is added to the compressed air and it's used to spin a turbine that isn't hooked up to the compressor? In that case it's the bastard child of a motorjet and a turboshaft - and looking at the temperatures involved it's unlikely to be terrible thermally efficient. They might be able to coax enough power out of it to drive a small chopper, and it might be cheaper and/or easier to maintain than a pure turboshaft engine... but somehow I think this will vanish into obscurity pretty fast.

TL:DR version: Two old ideas mashed together, unlikely to be 85% efficient

Caveat: I meet my Significant Other online, although not on a dating site.
The benefit of meeting online is that you're pretty much forced to talk, and talk, and talk. It's not like you can take them to a movie and then then make out in the back of the car - instead you'll have to show them that you're a likeable person they would like to spend more time with. Goes double when you're on different continents and all that... before either party gets on a plane both parties needs to be sure that they are comfertable with seeing this person they have talked to for a while. On the other hand, the guy you ran into in the coffee-shop who ask you out to see a movie may be the biggest creep in modern history - and if you let him drive you home he knows where you live:/TL:DR; Online dating works because you must talk and reveal yourself to the other before meeting.

Knowing several people in various states in the US, ranging from middle-aged to old... I'm anything but convinced. It seems to me that compared to Norwegians (and most likely to everyone in Northern Europe) you work harder for longer for less pay, and have less to show for it at the end of your life. I don't think that most people enjoys working 60-80 hours a week, knowing that they can't afford to retire... meaning they will work until they drop dead.

To quote a comment that arose over a Christmas dinner a few years ago; "What do you call retired people in the states?" "Greeters at WalMart."

The plural of "stuff I know" isn't data, but in this case it seems like the data is backing up the stuff I know. You don't "pack more into your years" - you're worn out faster by an system built to benefit the rich, and even the rich seems overall less happy than most people I see over on my end.

Still boggles and confuses me - as I'm sure it would anyone who are used to paying the amount listed. I know for a fact that a fair number of visiting Americans are boggled and confused by the fact that we're not adding a sales tax on top of the price during check-out... but they tend to agree it's convenient to do it our way. YMMV off course.

Here in Norway we been doing this for years:
- The 1 øre and 2 øre coins disappeared in '74
- The 5 øre and 25 øre coins were withdrawn in '84
- The 10 øre coin ended being legal tender in '92
- The 50 øre coin was withdrawn May 1st last year.
So while I can still recall putting a 5øre coin in my piggy-bank, there is now no coins circulating that is worth less than 1 Norwegian krone... but you know what? The wast majority of Norwegians pay by card anyhow, and the prices has not changed with the smaller coins going away. If you pay by card, you pay the exact amount. If you pay cash, it is rounded up or down to the nearest coin-value.

For those curious; after the retirement of the 50 øre coin, a purchase of 9.49 kroner is rounded down to 9.00 while a purchase of 9.50 kroner is rounded up to 10.00 - unless you pay by card, in which case you pay the exact sum owed. Off course it helps that the VAT is already added to the price listed - what you see is what you pay, but there is no reason why it shouldn't work equally well in places this isn't done (something which always boggles me when I'm visiting the US btw).

It's cheap and do what most people want a laptop to do - check emails, surf the web and type up the occasional letter. It's also a good machine for geeks, since it's not locked down with Windows or OSX - meaning you can stick any flavour of Linux you want on it if you know how. In the current economic situation it taps into the same markets as the original netbooks - the 7" and 9" Eee - did; people needing a cheap machine to get online and geek-heads wanting a toy.

The danger is off course that the Chromebook will go down the same slippery slope as the netbooks fif; bigger screens, more beefed up hardware... until they are just another laptop.

To quote the AC that got modded down: "How exactly are inch and the foot are more practical units for everyday use? cm and meter are used all around the world everyday and there's no problems with them."

Centimetres and metres are extremely practical for everyday use, as proven by the fact that most of the world use them without trouble on a day to day basis. And before you come up with the old and busted idea that you can't easily divide by three in the metric system - or at least not get a nice, round number - try telling me just how many inches a fifth of a foot is.. or a fifth of a yard.

Metrics are easier to explain, lets you convert between units easier and makes for simpler maths. The so called Standard measures do not.

Ten millimetres to the centimetre. Ten centimetres to the decimetre. Ten decimetres to the metre. Ten metres to the decametrr. Ten decametres to the hectameter. Ten hectametres to the kilometer. I now some of these prefixes isn't in common use, but it does show that all you have to do is to mulitply by ten.

Twelve inches to the foot. Three feet to the yard. One thousand, sevenhundred and sixty yards to the mile - or more correct; eight furlongs, each of which is ten chains, each chain is four rods, each of which again is twenty five links. And just to show how well thought out the system is; each link is 7.92 inches long... So you either have a progression of 12-3-1760, or one of 25-4-10-8.